A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(100)
As for being able to pass the cheques, that was simple. He’d been taking cheques to the bank to cash for Alexandre for years. He could continue doing so, with the forged cheques, as long as he didn’t start exceeding proper expenses without a damn good reason. He could continue to pay for the horse and coach, the household expenses, and whatever entertainment he cared to have.
The house was paid for. He could live here as long as he cared to, no one would know Alexandre wasn’t here.
As for income, Alexandre’s monthly stipend would continue to be deposited every quarter, as regular as clockwork, and Alf could draw cheques on it. As he understood these things, Alexandre had actually been living on the interest of a much larger sum, and as long as that “principal sum” was not touched, no one at the bank or the solicitor would care. Expenses would, in fact, be halved. If—not likely, but if—the solicitors came to have a look ’round, he could say the guv was out, which would technically be true. And meanwhile, he could be tucking half the expense money in his drawer, just in case the day came he had to cut and run for it. Bloody hell, if he felt like it, he could pick up some odd work with that coach and horse for a little more ready.
There was his old woman’s house of course. Papers would have to be signed in person by the guv if it was sold, and that could be a problem . . . all right, he’d go through Alexandre’s letters, and carefully copy out the right phrases suggesting to the solicitors that so valuable a property should be rented, not sold, and leave it to them to make the arrangements. Then there wouldn’t be papers to sign, and there would be more income, income he could draw on by slowly, gradually, increasing the size of the cheques he was writing.
He felt a slow smile spreading over his face. This wasn’t bad. This wasn’t bad at all. Just one little inconvenient thing to be rid of, and then—well, then it would be time to celebrate his new independence and freedom.
He went to the prone body of the mindless girl and got her to her feet and up the stairs. No point in that elaborate ruse to take her to the police station now—what would be the point of it? He just made sure she was warmly dressed, with a folded blanket draped over her by way of a coat or a shawl, secured in place with a few rough stitches in the front and under the arms, and led her out to the road in front of the house, pointing her the way she should go. “Start walkin’. An’ keep walkin’ until somebody stops yew,” he said, and obediently, she did just that. He was amazed that she didn’t shuffle along, like some of the loonies or lads full gone with drink he’d seen. She walked pretty normally, all things considered.
He retreated to the front door immediately. Around him, all the houses were dark; it wasn’t likely anyone had noticed him sending her on her way. Then he went back inside the house, locked up, went out the back door, and headed for the coach. The uneasy feeling was quite, quite gone. Time to put the horse to bed. Time to get a ride to where he could get a cab. Time to celebrate his new freedom, wealth, and independence. He grinned, and kept grinning, all the way to the stable. He’d wondered what the guv’s posh bed felt like; he’d had to make do with an old straw tick on a foundation of rope, while the guv had a wool mattress, proper springs, and a featherbed over all, in a bed big enough for four.
“There ye go, ol’ man,” he said aloud to the horse, as he drove it to its stable. “Thi’s ’ow bein’ loyal gits yew rewards. Nice ’ot mash fer yew, nice ’ot toddy an’ a even ’otter gel fer me.”
The horse picked up its pace, which seemed to indicate it agreed with his sentiments.
He chuckled, clinked the money in his pocket, and grinned all the way to the stable.
Nan woke out of a fitful sleep to find that Amelia was shaking her arm. She came completely awake, immediately; habit from years of living with her slut of a mother, when being too slow to wake up could mean being slapped awake or worse. In the dim light from the coal fire, she saw Amelia was kneeling at the side of her bed. “Nan,” the girl said urgently. “I’m about to have a vision—”
This might be the one we’re waiting for. But she couldn’t take the chance on Amelia being taken by the vision while she was sitting out there on the cold carpet. “Get into my bed,” Nan ordered, throwing back the covers and vacating her place so that Amelia could fill it. The girl obeyed her, and it was just as well that Nan had not wasted time trying to get her back to her proper place, because she was no sooner comfortable than she went rigid, her eyes got that fixed, entranced look about them, and Nan knew that a vision had overtaken her.
Thoroughly used to this by now, Nan wrapped herself in a warm dressing gown, sat down on the edge of the bed, allowed herself to drop into a light trance with one hand on Amelia’s, and joined her mind to the girl’s. There was a moment of disorientation, and then she seemed to be falling through blackness until she emerged into a place that, unlike when she had been there in person, shone with a dim, spectral radiance outlining everything.
That certainly would have been helpful when we were actually there.
Amelia was already waiting for her there, in that world where darkness seemed to be eternal and everything was in ruins. It was the same, too-familiar, lifeless landscape: skeletal trees clawing at the starless sky, broken ruins, rubble-strewn road pocked with holes and studded with the shattered detritus of everyday living. Only this time the landscape was not unpopulated. Two of the spider-things were scuttling away, with something carried between them. It looked like the lifeless body of a male human, though man or boy, Nan couldn’t tell. Was it a new victim, dragged inside by those black tentacles when Amelia sensed the portal opening? Was it someone who had been here a while, who had finally lost his battle to survive?